


if there’s a light at the end, it’s just the sun in your eyes

by BrunetteAuthorette99



Series: Kastle Week Drabbles [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (And She Gets It), (Really the Next Few Weeks After), Angst, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Frank Protects Karen, Gen, Halsey - Freeform, Karen Knows What She Wants, Kastle Halsey Week, Morning After, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-02 21:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10227866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrunetteAuthorette99/pseuds/BrunetteAuthorette99
Summary: Frank and Karen try to figure out where their slow, yet sudden relationship is going.Seven loosely connected Kastle drabbles inspired by seven Halsey songs forkastlenetwork'sKastle Halsey Week.





	1. take a breath and dive in deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 1:** "[Haunting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjyGkvNUtRU)"

She reminds him of Maria.

(Then again, Karen reminds him of Maria most days. It’s something about the smiles that they can’t help. It’s something about their devotion, or conviction: the iron behind blue eyes.

(But right now, it’s purely physical: the blonde hair in his fist, the long legs around his waist, the soft voice that breaks when she breathes, _oh, God,_ Frank –)

The bedroom is dark, but Frank masks his face by kissing her neck. Her pulse pounds underneath his mouth; lavender shampoo fills his nose.

 _Maria smelled of mint,_ he thinks, and, untethered, escapes himself inside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158580163852/take-a-breath-and-dive-in-deep)


	2. there's a menace in my bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 2:** "[Trouble](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2aTxmwRiJQ)"

Somewhere between the front door and her bedroom, Karen had thought, laughably,  _anyone rational would tell me I’m insane._

… Well. She’d long left rational thought somewhere in Fagan Corners, Vermont, and the calloused hands parting her thighs had taken care of what remained.

Frank lies beside her now: a solid, still shadow.  _Sleeping like the dead,_ Karen thinks, and hates herself for thinking it.

She curls into his side, tucking her head under his arm. The room is corpse-cold, but he isn’t.

And anyway, he was never dead to her, despite her desperate ultimatum.

Karen wonders if he knows that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158620756152/theres-a-menace-in-my-bed)


	3. so simple, but we can't stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 3:** "[Drive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oI-BsWbIg4)"

Early in the morning, they eat the Thai food meant for last night. They lounge on the couch, with Karen’s legs slung over Frank’s knees, and share chicken satay and massaman curry from the cartons between them. They’ve already divided his clothes – Frank keeps his pants; Karen gets his shirt.

(She observes how his gaze lingers where the hem rides up on her thigh and thinks: _leg man_.)

“What’re you smiling at?” he asks. In the light seeping through the curtains, he looks younger: without tension, without troubles.

She knows it won’t last.

“You.”  _As long as you'll let me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158658846447/so-simple-but-we-cant-stay)


	4. keep a close watch on this heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 4:** "[I Walk the Line](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjl4lysi_s)"

_Christ, I’m a fool._

It’s all Frank’s been thinking since leaving Karen’s apartment at eleven past six. Now it’s six past eleven, and his body is sitting in a sniper’s nest on a dockside warehouse roof while his mind is back in Karen’s bedroom.

He doesn’t make a habit of regretting his actions. But he deeply regrets his attachment.

_If anything kills Karen Page, it’ll be that._

Tires grind below him, and he shoulders the rifle. Karen’s scoop on the city’s scum was good, as usual.

She always was. He wasn’t.

 _Wish it was that simple,_ Frank thinks, and fires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158696279882/keep-a-close-watch-on-this-heart)


	5. say that you're no good for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 5:** "[Ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4o-XRU_KM)"

Karen’s latest exposé isn’t just attracting his attention. When Frank comes around a week later, there’s a man skulking by the door of her apartment complex. He has a gun that’s soon dropped after Frank smashes his fingers.

The man swears in between suffocated screams that he isn’t there for the journalist. Frank knows it’s bullshit, and breaks both his kneecaps, then his neck, to let him know.

It isn’t like gunning down the Irish or stringing up the cartels. It’s done with a fierce fury: for Karen’s safety and his own stupidity.

(Frank keeps his distance a little longer.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158733971317/say-that-youre-no-good-for-me)


	6. he's off to pay his crimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 6:** "[Coming Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRXO77hJGKA)"

Karen hasn’t seen Frank in weeks.

She’s seen his handiwork: the human traffickers on the docks that she knew of, the man in her building’s dumpster that she knew nothing about. But the brutality that broke his bones says that Frank knew plenty.

She’s pissed. Not with what he’s done, but how he deals. She’s had a target on her back since Union Allied, and while the Punisher’s presence hasn’t changed that, Karen can’t say she feels  _less_  safe.

So he wants to protect her in his own distant, dangerous way. She can accept the danger.

Just not his distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158774819377/hes-off-to-pay-his-crimes)


	7. my heart is gold and my hands are cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[#KastleHalseyWeek](http://kastlenetwork.tumblr.com/post/157926751461/its-time-to-keep-this-kastle-musical-artist-week), Day 7:** "[Gasoline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRHNi3QfFlE)"

Frank’s sitting on the fire escape when she gets home. He has two beers from her fridge: one in his hand, the other at his side.

Karen takes off her heels and joins him. He opens the extra beer, and the two of them drink and stare at the city lights in silence.

Finally, he speaks. “I can’t stop.” It’s neither proclamation nor plea: just simple statement.

She knows he doesn’t mean the killing. “Then don’t.”

Frank chuckles: dark, wry. “Afraid you’d say that, ma’am.”

(The force of his kiss is the recoil of a well-loved gun. She absorbs, unafraid.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [On Tumblr](http://brunetteauthorette99.tumblr.com/post/158806606792/my-heart-is-gold-and-my-hands-are-cold)
> 
> Thanks for reading! I love doing these Kastle drabbles, and I continue to be awed and humbled by how much people love them. Readers and reviewers: you _rock._
> 
> _**BrunetteAuthorette99**_


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